Hatsune Miku V3 English
;This is an article about the Hatsune Miku English software for the VOCALOID3 engine. History At the time of her first announcement, it was unknown if this update to Miku would be for VOCALOID2 or VOCALOID3.link Miku English: 2007 Miku was originally going to have both a Japanese and an English voicebank when she was conceptualized in 2007. However, the concept that was destined to be Hatsune Miku, later became Megurine Luka.link Miku English: 2008 Requests were made as far back as March 2008 for Miku English. In August they decided to try and make this a reality, it was driven by the desire to allow the world to use the Hatsune Miku voice. When interviewed about Miku Append, English was raised. The decision was driven by sales on i-tunes of Vocaloid songs. Experience from Luka English had been gained and Hatsune Miku Append had taught them new recording techniques.link Miku English: 2010 On October 8, 2010, at the New York Comic-Con, Ito Hiroyuki (Crypton's CEO) announced that if Miku's Facebook page hit 39,390 "likes", an English voicebank would be developed. The project was termed "Project MIKUCASH". Recording had already begun and the vocal was 1/3 recorded by August 2010.linklink Miku's page has reached more than 1,000,000 "likes" on her Facebook page (run by Crypton staff). On November 17, Wat mentioned he would be announcing more information in the future weeks.link In December, Wat questioned if the vocal would be VOCALOID2 or VOCALOID3.link Miku English: 2011 Early on in the English voicebank announcement, Crypton Future Media made a point that they would not make a localized version of the software if it did not meet their expectations, or if it did not sound cute enough, they would cancel it.link The alpha stage of development went under review the weekend of March 19, 2011. By then, it was still far from the beta stage.link Crypton reported they would keep their fans up to date with its development and were aiming for a good, qualified English voicebank. Crypton also reported that they would like to do Miku English Appends in the future, however, they have no specific plans right now.http://vocaloid.wikia.com/wiki/Vocaloid_on_Twitter#Potential_English_bank_of_Hatsune_Miku.27s Tweet - Potential English bank of Hatsune Miku's - 11:06 PM Mar 17th On May 28, 2011, demos of KAITO Append, Whisper and Power, along with Miku English were posted on Niconico. This voicebank was only 40% complete and there is more development left to do. As noted by a number of native English fans, her smoothness was lacking, but improvements had already been made from Luka's voicebank.link Wat had also mentioned previously that he would love to hear the expression change to "Dark" or "Sweet" in English.link On July 2, 2011, a Beta version of Miku's English voicebank was used at the "MikuNopolis" concert in Los Angeles. It was used to enable Miku to address the audience and, with Luka, perform World's End Dancehall with English lyrics (although Luka sang most of the song). On October 16, a video was uploaded on YouTube showing Miku's English Voicebank with greater improvement. On October 24, it was reported that Miku's voicebank was 70% complete and all the basic sounds had been captured.linl Wat tweeted on the December 1, 2011, noting that all previous demos had originally been rendered with the VOCALOID2 engine, and things were being redone for the VOCALOID3 engine.link Miku English: 2012 On March 25, 2012, a demo using Miku's English voicebank composed by Fink was released. At the time, the voicebank was still in beta and her triphones were still needing adjustment.link It was also mentioned that in the future they would like to add Appends to the English version to give Miku English expression. However, they are currently undecided on the matter.link On July 31, 2012, a usage of English Miku singing NICE AGE was released, and was purposely edited to have a strong Japanese accent. This song will also be featured the album "増殖気味 X≒MULTIPLIES", along with other songs using the English vocal.link On December 15, 2012, another usage was released: a cover of Day Tripper (stylized in all caps) by The Beatles, composed by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Note that NICE AGE and DAY TRIPPER are not demos of English Miku and should not be treated as such. Further adjustments were made to KAITO and Miku in early October prior to their vocals demostration.link A English demo of Miku and KAITO was shown NYCCon 2012. Both were still in Beta version.link Yuu Asakawa stated that Hatsune Miku English would be released in the Spring of 2013. Miku English: 2013 A short usage of English Miku was uploaded on February 7, with Miku singing "Spectrum", remixed by kz (livetune). Circus-P worked on the tuning for the for the track. A longer version was later uploaded on February 25. "Spectrum" was written by ZEDD, a producer who has also written songs for Skrillex, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. The livetune remix featuring Miku is featured on the Japanese release of ZEDD's debut album, "Clarity". Note that Spectrum is not a demo of English Miku and should not be treated as such. kz (livetune) used English Miku once again, also tuned by Circus-P, in his English version of "Tell Your World". It is featured on his album Re:Dial which was released on March 20. On March 9, Crypton updated their product page for the English version of Miku. It stated that English Miku was pushed back to summer 2013, with planned collaborations with popular labels and artists. The page was shortened on March 11, removing any details about her release and advertisement to potential business partners. At Anime Expo, it was announced that Miku English would be the first VOCALOID to be made for Apple's Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Later, this was confirmed on the official Facebook page of Miku as well. Crypton recently put up this website, confirming the VOCALOID's summer release. Hatsune Miku V3 English was released on August 31, 2013 as download only software. Later on in regards to a talk on Miku's 6th anniversary, aspects of Miku English were discussed. Some of the things discussed was why a on-line sale was chosen first for the vocal. Crypton mentioned that they wanted simultaneous sales world wide for the release. Sweet ANN was used as a guide for Miku's development. They also noted that Miku English did not produce good results on the VOCALOID2 engine so it was not released for this version. They also discussed that they had to make changes in art and vocal tone in order to appeal to the new cultures they were selling Miku to abroad. Wat confirmed that her voice had been adjusted to make her sound more mature.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD9H34jvh0c Miku English also faced problems that even native English VOCALOIDs have faced, in that English, unlike Japanese, had no definite sounds, which lead to problems collecting data.link In an interview, Saki Fujita stated that she had to do many more takes for the English voicebank whereas she did not have to do this for the Japanese vocal unless something unexpected came up. In addition, her pronunciation had to be approved by an English instructor. She noted that she has become fast at reading the Vocaloid script and when first presented with the English one, was taken back by how different it was to the Japanese one, causing her to think she would have to re-learn how to read scripts. The V3 development team said that it was difficult to achieve the same sound during a re-recording for artificial and physical reasons. Fujita also went through training on how to produce the 'r' and 'l' sounds of the English language. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD9H34jvh0c Product Information Demonstrations 2011 2012 2013 Recommended ;PC version *OS: Windows 7（32/64bit）/ Windows 8（32/64bit）/ Vista（32bit）/ XP（32bit） *CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz processor or better *RAM: 2GB or more *HDD: 10GB or more *Other: DVD-ROM drive / Sound Device (with DirectX Support) / Graphics Card that supports OpenGL 3.0 or higher / A monitor resolution no lower than 1280 x 768 pixels / Internet connection ;Mac *OS: OS X 10.7, 10.8 *CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz processor or better *RAM: 2GB or more *HDD: 8GB or more *Other: DVD-ROM drive / A monitor resolution no lower than 1280 x 768 pixels / Internet connection Voicebank Libraries |-|Hatsune Miku; English = Hatsune Miku V3 English also includes Piapro Studio. References